Bündner Kunstmuseum shows an unknown side of Otto Dix
Published: Thursday, Jun 20th 2024, 10:20
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The German painter Otto Dix is best known for his drastic depictions of the horrors of the First World War. However, the Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur is now showing him under a hitherto little-noticed aspect: landscape paintings with a strong connection to Switzerland.
Gas warfare in the trenches or the decadence of the Roaring Twenties: these are the themes of the mostly realistic paintings from the 1920s with which the German painter and graphic artist Otto Dix (1891-1969) is still known today.
The Bündner Kunstmuseum Chur is now showing him in a completely different, but no less political way. The exhibition "Otto Dix and Switzerland" features landscape paintings. Their old-masterly painting style stands in stark contrast to his expressionist work.
These landscapes from the late 1930s are considered pictures of an "inner emigration", which convey an "almost uncanny emptiness of the times", as the museum writes in a press release. Dix's biographical background to this is that he lost his professorship at the Dresden Academy of Art in 1933 and was ostracized by the National Socialists as a so-called "degenerate" artist.
Dix withdrew to Lake Constance and spent several months in Samedan. During this time, he painted these landscapes. According to the Bündner Kunstmuseum, these paintings have never been shown together before. The museum is placing the painting "San Gian in Winter" from its own collection in the wider context of other oil paintings and a series of drawings.
The exhibition "Otto Dix and Switzerland" can be seen from June 22 to October 27. The show is part of the current Switzerland-wide project "Look how the glacier is disappearing". The museum also quotes Otto Dix in 1943, who suggests climbing a glacier: "... anyone who does not believe in fate or God at the sight of these great forces can no longer be helped."
©Keystone/SDA
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